Today we have reached an exciting milestone on our Whale Cottage Blog, in that this is our 1000th blogpost. We thank our readers for their support in reading our blog, and for providing feedback, to help us improve as we developed over the almost three years. In numerology, 1000 symbolises multitude and perfection, we have learnt from Google, and we dedicate our next 1000 blogposts to be worthy of this definition.

Highlights have been making the Top 10 on the Most Controversial Blog category of the 2010 SA Blog Awards, achieving a cumulative unique readership of just under half a million in the last 16 months (about 30000 per month on average), and setting up the Food & Wine Bloggers’ Club last year.

So what have we learnt about blogging and our blog in the close to three years:

* Restaurant news in general, and reviews and special offers specifically have attracted the greatest interest on this blog. Our most widely read restaurant reviews, since we went onto Google Analytics 16 months ago, are for Tokara DeliCATessen, Sotana by Caveau, Gaaitjie, Pierneef à La Motte, and Duchess on Wisbeach. It was the enjoyment of writing the review of Portofino restaurant, owned by Cormac Keane, that got us started with reviews, and we have written more than 100 reviews since then. We have seen negative reaction to some of these, and have been banned from the Caveau group of restaurants (including Sotano), the Caviar group of restaurants (Beluga and Sevruga), Opal Lounge, and Café des Arts as a result. Restaurants generally are poor at Social Media, and only a handful blog and/or are on Twitter. This means that a restaurant’s information most often is provided by a blog rather than by the restaurant’s own website, which can be to its advantage or diadvantage, depending on the reviews that are listed on the first page of Google. Other highly read blogposts are the Winter and Summer Restaurant Specials lists, the Table Mountain vote for the New7Wonders of the World, Prince Albert and Charlene Wittstock’s visit to Fresnaye in January 2009, and the Disney service training programme instituted just days before the World Cup.

* Tourism topics have also attracted attention, probably because there are far fewer writers on this topic.

* Word spreads quickly if a blogpost is controversial, and brings in new readers to the blog. Despite all allegations to the contrary, we have never written a blogpost to be controversial. It is the reaction to it by our readers that causes the controversy.

* Comments have become harder to manage, and increasingly cowardly commenters write anonymously to slate the writer of the blog or the subject of a blogpost. If one deletes such comments, one is criticised; if one publishes them, one is equally criticised!

* While blog readers enjoy honesty, and probably read this blog for it, those that are on the receiving end of it plus their friends do react with venom, rather than using the feedback to improve their service and quality. The nastiness in ‘unSocial Media’, our new name for it, has been shocking, especially in a campaign by David Cope on Twitter, where anything goes!

* Blogging has become very competitive, as bloggers chase readership, and want to be the first to review a new restaurant. Achieving a first page Google listing for a restaurant, for example, can attract readership over time to the blog by new users when they Google the name of a restaurant.

* Readership is disappointingly low on public holidays and weekends. Saturdays have the lowest blog reading numbers, dropping by up to half of weekday readership. Our highest readership of this blog was on 16 June 2010, during last year’s World Cup, when a tag for ‘2010’ was widely linked to this blog, attracting 9000 page views on that day alone.

* Although most readers are unknown to the writer, one carries a huge responsibility in shaping people’s opinions through what one writes. We try our best to remain objective in presenting information at all times. We have been blamed for wishing to destroy restaurants and new initiatives, yet supply news about restaurant openings and specials all the time. Attempts were made last year by Michael Olivier (Editor of Crush!), David Cope (The Foodie Blogger) and Skye Grove (Cape Town Tourism PR Manager) to have this blog closed down. We moved our blog hosting to America, to prevent this.

* Information as well as images are most likely to bring traffic via Google to the website, followed by Twitter. Facebook is far less likely to draw traffic.

* The weekly Sweet & Sour Service are enjoyed by readers, and many readers read the blog on a Friday, to check who has received the Sour Award, and then catch up in reading the blogposts of the pevious week. The Spar Sweet/Limelight Sour Service Awards attracted an unusually high readership, and still do.

Looking forward, we plan to continue being honest, no matter what the cost. We will endeavour to remain relevant, and to remain heard in the increasing Social Media ‘noise’, as more and more blogs are started, and existing ones reinvent themselves. We will try to write shorter blogposts! We will continue helping others to become better bloggers, and will endeavour to never stop learning from others too.